Then Amed saw a huge mouth well up with blood and move toward him.
“Thief! Thief!
“I’m going to denounce you!
“You’ve stolen your brother’s life!
“You’ve chopped his body into pieces!
“You’ve hidden it inside your pillow!”
That night, Amed’s horrified cries woke Zahed and Tamara. When they came into his room, the child was standing on his bed, screaming with fear, and pointing his finger at the window. He’d bitten his wounded hand, and had smeared blood on his face. He kept saying that Dôdi’s big mouth had wanted to eat him.
At dawn, Zahed borrowed his neighbor’s truck. Something had to be done. Amed was delirious and burning with fever. Since his brother’s death, he’d not stopped losing weight, and was becoming skeletal. Tamara wrapped him in a blanket and climbed with him into the truck. She herself seemed feverish and couldn’t hold back her tears. A few months earlier, Zahed had rented a car to take Aziz to the hospital. Driving to the big city again this morning, he thought he was transporting the same son. He didn’t suspect that this time it was, in fact, Amed that his wife was holding in her arms. They passed through several villages disfigured by recent bombings. Suddenly, Zahed stopped the truck.
“The doctor warned us. This is the end, Tamara.”
“No, it’s not possible!”
“We have to let him die in peace. There’s no point in taking him there. It will be worse for him. And for us. Listen, we should go back home.”
“I beg you, Zahed, we must take him to the hospital.”
“The roads aren’t safe anymore. You know that. It’s become more dangerous of late. And what will that change, in any case? For me, Aziz is already . . .”
“You have no heart!”
Tamara was on the verge of revealing to her husband that the two brothers had traded places. But Zahed continued toward the big city.
At the hospital, when he saw his father’s face bent over his own, Amed realized that something strange had happened. He’d never seen his father smiling so gently. Zahed was not the same man.
His mother explained to Amed what had occurred during the days he was delirious. The doctor had done tests, thinking Amed was Aziz. As he and his mother would have expected, there was no more sign of cancer. For the doctor who had treated his brother, it was a true miracle. He saw no other explanation for this surprising cure. It was a miracle that filled Zahed with joy, and his wife with anguish.
Back at home, Zahed told everyone he saw that his prayers had been answered: God had cured his sick child. He went to the child, touched Amed as though to reassure himself that the boy was truly alive, held him in his arms, said over and over again that his son’s sacrifice was not in vain, God had rewarded him by healing his brother.
Amed was ashamed, terrified even.
A short time later, there was a period of calm in the region. The bombings almost stopped. Harvest time drew near and Zahed hired a dozen employees to help in the orange grove. The baskets of oranges piled up in the little warehouse, and Zahed decided to organize a great celebration in honor of Amed, his dead son and martyr, and Aziz, his other son, saved by God. And so it came to pass that people were invited to mark the end of the harvest that year.
Many people came. All the employees, members of their families, neighbors. Zahed also invited Kamal, Halim’s father, and, of course, Soulayed. Tamara decorated the house and women from nearby came to help her prepare many dishes. Amed got new clothes. In the central room, the large photo of the martyred son was weighted with garlands. Lanterns were lit before it. Amed couldn’t look. He lowered his head every time he passed before it. That photo was a lie. There had never been so many people in the house. People talked as if they were happy. This noisy happiness was also a lie. Before Tamara served the meal, Zahed insisted on leading everyone to the site of his parents’ ruined house. With an energy intensified by all his listeners, he spoke of that fateful night. He described the deafening noise of the bomb, the horrible odor that followed, the debris, the mangled bodies of his poor parents. People cursed the enemies, turning toward the mountain. Just then two hands pressed down on Amed’s shoulders. When he turned, Soulayed’s beaming smile filled him with fear.
“How are you?”
Amed couldn’t answer.
“Have you lost your tongue?”
Words stuck in Amed’s throat.
“Are you Amed or Aziz? It’s strange. I can never remember. The one who came with me, which one was he?”
Amed knew he was lying, or playing at not being able to remember. Everyone now knew the name of the dead martyr. Everyone had pronounced it dozens of times since the start of the celebration. It was his own name.
Amed went back to the house without saying a word to Soulayed. After the meal, Zahed rose, told everyone to be silent, and asked Kamal to address the guests. He stood in his turn, and spoke of the sacrifice of his only son, Halim. In just a few months, Kamal had aged greatly. His voice trembled, his words dropped from his mouth like tired fruit. He claimed to be the happiest of fathers. His son was in Paradise. Then Zahed gave the floor to Soulayed. His noble stature imposed a respectful silence.
“The harvest gladdens hope, and hope relies on a gaze that has no fear of seeing the truth, said our great poet, Nahal.”
It was with this sentence that Soulayed addressed the people. Amed would never forget it, and afterward he repeated it often to himself. It seemed to him at once luminous and blinding, like an obsessive mystery. He was certain that Soulayed had spoken it just for him. That was an illusion. Soulayed’s truth had nothing to do with his own, but he was too young to understand that clearly.
“The gaze is like a bird, it needs wings to stay aloft. Otherwise it falls to the ground,” Soulayed went on. “We must never lower our eyes before the enemy. Never. Our hatred and our courage are wings that bear our gaze beyond the mountain, beyond the lie on which the dogs feed. Kamal and Zahed have understood. And their sons as well.”
Soulayed then positioned himself in front of the photo of the martyr of the house, this photo that threw back to Amed his own image, and spoke of his brother’s courage, of the beauty of his sacrifice. He spoke for a long time. His sentences bent around, returned to their starting place, launched themselves again with even greater force. Soulayed seemed unstoppable. All the guests drank in his words without daring to make the slightest movement. After a while, Amed realized that he was no longer listening. He stared at Soulayed’s lips. They had detached themselves from his bearded face, and were projecting into the large room words that in the end had no meaning. They had become noise. Soulayed’s words exploded in the air like fragile little bombs that left behind them trails of silence.
Amed went near. He moved so close that Soulayed stopped talking. He leaned over and lifted Amed into his arms. He looked at him with surprise. Amed suddenly felt very sick. As if an animal were trying to make its way out of his belly. And then he saw something in Soulayed’s mouth. In his large open mouth, right in front of his eyes. Something he saw without seeing it.
“What, Aziz, what did you see in Soulayed’s mouth?”
Aziz looked into Mikaël’s eyes for the first time since they’d met that day.
“I don’t know how to explain it to you, sir, I just can’t.”
“A vision? You had a vision?”
“Maybe. Yes, like a vision. But not with pictures. It was more like an odor . . .”
“An odor that you saw?”
“I don’t know, sir. But it was something upsetting that had just entered my heart . . . like a premonition . . .”
“That came from his mouth?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“A premonition of what?”
“Something terrible had happened, and it had to do with my brother. And that, that thing, was there in Soulayed’s mouth. It lurked there like a memory or a sensation. . . . I . . . I realize, talking to you, that this doesn’t really make
any sense.”
“No, on the contrary, Aziz. Go on. Please. What happened next?”
“I started to shake. My body rocked with spasms. Soulayed held me against him and enclosed me in his arms. The pain in my stomach had changed. I mean, it was no longer pain, but a force that had to come out of me. I freed myself from Soulayed’s grip, and ran to the photo. I smashed the glass with my fist and I tore the photo into two pieces. Then I started to shout in front of all my father’s guests: ‘That’s me in the photo, me, Amed! There was never any miracle, the one who left was Aziz!’ My father grabbed me by the neck with one hand, lifted me up and threw me against the wall. I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was lying in my bed. My mother was bent over, her face propped against the window of the room. I called to her. She turned toward me. I almost didn’t recognize her. Her face was swollen. There were big black rings around her eyes. Dried blood on her nose. She told me, speaking with great difficulty, that I could no longer live in that house. I had become the son of no one.”
“You had to leave your family?”
“Yes. I went to live with my father’s cousin in the big city. I stayed there for several months. I was badly treated. I had dishonored my family. I did not deserve the food I was given. I was barely tolerated. I wanted to see my mother. I had no news from her. My father had forbidden her from seeing me. Then, one day, my father’s cousin told me I was going to leave for America. I didn’t believe him. But it was the truth. I learned that my mother, with the help of her sister, had arranged everything so that I would leave the country. I arrived on a boat with dozens of other refugees. I went to live with my aunt Dalimah. She’d lost the child she was carrying. I cried when I saw her. She looked like my mother. I couldn’t stop crying.”
Aziz went quiet, his eyes on his cup of coffee. Mikaël didn’t dare break the silence. He raised his head to look out the wide window of the restaurant where they had taken refuge after their long walk. Night was falling fast. Mikaël could see the river far off, slipping into a bluish light. It was now snowing softly, a few lost flakes sparkling under the streetlights.
“Would you rather I called you Aziz or Amed?”
“You can keep calling me Aziz.”
“Are you still cold?”
“No.”
Mikaël asked for the bill, and after he had paid they left the restaurant. The sidewalks, the streets, the passersby, the roofs of parked cars, all were white, covered in spotless snow. Before leaving him in front of a subway station, Mikaël asked Aziz if he would be returning to class.
“And the child in the play?” replied Aziz.
“Don’t be afraid. Sony isn’t going to die.”
Aziz went back to acting class. Mikaël was relieved, and at the same time perceived Aziz’s return as an added responsibility. He had promised Aziz that Sony wouldn’t die. For that, he had to rewrite the scene where the mercenary asked the child to give him a valid reason for letting him live. How to change that ending? Where to find the words that would touch this soldier’s heart, debased by war, despairing and dehumanized? After hesitating for a while, Mikaël found the courage to ask Aziz to relate the story of his childhood, the story he’d told Mikaël as they walked. He didn’t see what else he could do. Aziz’s words, even improvised, would sound more authentic, truer than anything he could write for this scene. He was sure of it. He told himself that if the soldier heard the story of the explosives belt worn by a small sick child—the story of the twin brothers who traded places, which was not theater because it had really happened—and thought about his own son while listening to this story, about his son who looked so much like the little boy recounting this searing story as if it were a memory, there would then be a chance he wouldn’t shoot Sony down like a dog.
“I couldn’t,” Aziz replied at once.
“You’ll do it in your own words, very simply. Just the basics. It will take only a few minutes.”
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“Do you want to think about it?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I could help you.”
“I couldn’t!” Aziz cried, in a way that ended the discussion.
“I shouldn’t have asked that of you. Please forgive me. Don’t worry, I’ll find a solution. Sony won’t die. See you tomorrow, Aziz.”
Aziz left without saying good-bye.
Mikaël had been rehearsing that day in the school auditorium, a flexible space that could accommodate a hundred spectators. The scenery, lighting, and costumes were conceived and executed by students in theater design, whom Mikaël supervised in collaboration with his colleagues. The class had just rehearsed the play on the set for the first time, and the day had been rather arduous. The choral sections were too slow, and a good half of Mikaël’s lighting cues had to be reworked.
After Aziz left, Mikaël stayed by himself for a long while, in the middle of the set. The entire playing space was a Plexiglas floor covered in sand. About fifteen lights had been installed under this floor. The light shone from below, illuminating the layer of sand, rendering it burning hot or cold, depending on the scene. Dawn and twilight were evoked through these desert ambiences. In the course of the action, paths of light appeared in the sand, disturbed by the movements of the group. The floor was transformed into a luminous canvas, conveying to the public its cruel mystery or signs of hope.
Sitting in the sand, swathed in shadow, Mikaël was haunted by the mercenary he’d created. Was he not simply a monster? Mikaël wasn’t naive. He hadn’t written this text just to make his students think. He was asking himself the same questions about evil. It was too easy to accuse those who committed war crimes of being assassins or wild beasts. Especially when those who judged them lived far from the circumstances that had provoked the conflicts, whose origins were lost in the vortex of history. What would he have done in a comparable situation? Would he, like millions of other men, have been capable of fighting for an idea, a scrap of earth, a border, or even oil? Would he, too, have been conditioned to kill innocents, women and children? Or would he have had the courage, even if it meant risking his life, to refuse the order to shoot down defenseless people with a burst of machine gun fire?
“I didn’t tell you everything, sir.”
Mikaël gave a start. Lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t noticed Aziz returning to the hall. Mikaël made out his silhouette among the rows of seats.
“I can’t see you very well. Turn on the console near you.”
For rehearsals, they placed a theater console in the center of the hall. It was more practical for adjusting the lighting and music cues. When Aziz turned on the console, the stage floor lit up for a moment, dazzling Mikaël.
“It’s beautiful!”
“What, Aziz?”
“The set. That light coming through the sand. It’s like it’s raining in reverse.”
“Yes, a rain of light rising from the ground. That’s it exactly.”
Aziz repeated, “I didn’t tell you everything, sir.”
“About what?”
“About Soulayed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The thing I saw in his mouth, you remember?”
“You want to talk about your premonition?”
“Yes, that thing . . . it was a lie.”
“Come here. Come up on the stage.”
Aziz came to sit in the sand. His face, transformed by the lighting, seemed older, harder.
“Soulayed was just a liar, sir. He lied to us the day he took my brother and me away in the jeep.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told us the mountain was mined, he told us that God had guided our steps that day. It was a lie. There never were any mines on that mountain. Nor had God broken our kite string. It was only the wind. And what we saw on the other side of the mountain was not military warehouses. It was a refugee camp. Soulayed manipulated our father. He manipulated us all.”
“That’s horrible.”
“
Yes, it’s horrible.”
“I’m sorry, Aziz.”
“Soulayed did nothing but lie to us, sir. Because of him, Paradise is a field of ruins and my brother is a murderer.”
“Don’t say that, your brother was only a child.”
“I have the right to say it.”
“Don’t accuse him of having been a murderer. That is incomprehensible.”
“I learned many things thanks to Dalimah’s husband. My father had told us over and over, with contempt, that our aunt had married an enemy. At first, I feared the man. I couldn’t help it. I had no choice, though, but to go and live in his house. And I was also ashamed. After all, if I’d been the one to leave with the belt, I could have killed his relatives or neighbors. I imagined so many terrifying things. In time, I realized that my uncle was not a dog, as my father had said, but rather a good man who had fled his country because he could no longer endure the bombs and the attacks, the massacres and the lies. When I announced that I wanted to become an actor, my aunt was agreeable, but he wasn’t. He tried to talk me out of it. He wanted me to become an engineer like him. He told me that with my accent, no one would give me a role. That I wouldn’t be able to work in my new country. That I was too different. I insisted. I said to him, ‘But Uncle Mani, that’s what I want to do most in the world. I’m going to work hard and, you’ll see, I’m going to succeed. And no one, no one will be able to tell where I come from, no one.’ He didn’t want to listen. So I talked to him about voices and stars.”
“Voices and stars?”
“Don’t think I’m crazy, sir. But every night I look at the sky and I think of my brother. I search for him in the sky.”
“And have you found him?”
“No. My brother has disappeared from the sky. But I can’t help myself. I keep searching.”
The Orange Grove Page 7
